A house cat owner must frequently change litter in a litter box. A litter box contains litter, typically a clay-based substance that clumps when wet. Often, the litter box is lined with a plastic bag liner, to facilitate discarding and replacing the litter.
The cat performs its excretory functions while standing on the cat litter. Cat urine soaks into the cat litter forming clumps. The cat typically buries the excrement beneath the surface of the litter.
To avoid unsanitary conditions and malodors, such clumps and buried excrement must be removed. Failure to do so no only results in highly unpleasant odors, but risks rejection of the litter box, particularly by fastidious felines.
To facilitate removal of noxious clumps of urine soaked litter and excrement, handheld sieves have been devised. These devices resemble a small shovel with a perforated scoop. The perforations typically comprise elongated parallel openings, through which unclumped litter may fall back into the box, while clumped litter and excrement is removed. Unfortunately, however, the act of thrusting the scoop into the litter tends to rip the liner and break apart clumps into small pieces. This causes much of urine soaked clumps to remain in the litter box. Additionally, many clumps and excrement droppings are easily missed by scoop. Furthermore, the process of scooping is time consuming and tedious.
What is needed is a system of sifting all clumps and excrement from the litter, quickly and reliably. Such a system should save the remaining unclumped and excrement-free litter for re-use, while discarding the clumped litter and excrement.
The invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems and solving one or more of the needs as set forth above.